How to Winter: Harnessing Your Mindset to Embrace All Seasons of Life

A blend of mindset science, original research, and cultural insights for cultivating a positive ＂wintertime mindset,＂ to vanquish winter blues and find joy and comfort in dark times year-round.

Do you dread the end of Daylight Saving Time and grouch about the long, chilly season of gray skies and ice? Do you find yourself in a slump every January and February? What if there were a way to rethink this time of year? Psychologist and winter expert Kari Leibowitz’s galvanizing HOW TO WINTER uses mindset science to help readers embrace winter as a season to be enjoyed, not endured--and in turn, learn powerful lessons that can impact our mental wellbeing throughout the year.

Kari Leibowitz moved above the Arctic Circle - where the sun doesn’t rise for two months each winter -expecting to research the season’s negative effects on mental health, only to find that inhabitants actually looked forward to it with delight and enthusiasm. Leibowitz has since travelled to places on earth with some of the coldest, darkest, longest and most intense winters, and discovered the power of ＂wintertime mindset＂-- viewing the season as full of opportunity and wonder. Impactful strategies for cultivating this wintertime mindset can teach us not just about braving the gray, cold months of the year, but also the darker and more difficult seasons of life.

• In Troms , Norway, people live in rhythm with nature, adapting to the months-long Polar Night by honoring seasonal fluctuations in energy, slowing down, and resting more.
• On the Isle of Lewis, off the coast of Scotland, communal gatherings around roaring fires embrace darkness and provide connection during long nights.
• In Yamagata, Japan, families sink into steaming onsen baths, banishing the chill of winter with healthful soaks that improve sleep and reduce risk of heart attack.

Inspired by cutting-edge psychological and behavioral science research as well as cultures worldwide that find warmth and joy in winter’s extremes, HOW TO WINTER provides readers with concrete tools for making winter wonderful wherever they live and harnessing the power of small mindset changes with big impact to help readers embrace every season of life.

Kari Leibowitz is a health psychologist with a Ph.D. in psychology from Stanford University where she conducted research at the Stanford Mind & Body Lab, a U.S.-Norway Fulbright Scholar, and a frequently invited writer and speaker on the power of mindset. Her pioneering research on wintertime mindsets in Norway was published in The International Journal of Wellbeing, she has written about wintertime mindset for The New York Times and The Washington Post, and her work has been covered by The Guardian, CNN, National Geographic, Forbes, The Telegraph, BBC, and New Scientist.